A music label. It releases records that carry a sealed second channel, unlocked by a key.

The track plays for anyone and sounds whole. Held with the key, a second channel unlocks and plays in sync, and what you hear then is the complete work.

The sealed channel is encrypted, not hidden. Anyone inspecting the file can see that it is there. It sits in a standard FLAC metadata block under AES-256-GCM, so anybody holding the key can open it with a short script in any language that has an AES library — which is all of them. No player to install, no account, nothing in between deciding.

That is also the whole distinction from DRM, and it is not a small one. DRM has to defeat the person holding the file, so it needs a player it controls and a company that stays alive. This needs neither. It needs somebody to have put a key in your hand. After that the audio is yours the way any file is yours.

Keys are per-drop and pass between people. Nothing about a release depends on a website staying up.

Access is not membership. The key opens a record. Being involved is what makes somebody part of the scene — being in the room, playing, hosting, bringing somebody, being asked back — and the key is the residue of that involvement rather than the route into it. It records a relation it did not create.

There is no music yet. The carrier is built and the site is up; the records are what comes next.

zariia.org — including who this is addressed to, how the rooms are made, and where the name comes from.

Ahmedabad · Prayas Abhinav